Loo..ong Weekend

This weekend is Olive festival , wich means thousands of people are coming to visit, so I have been labeling up a storm.

I did my labeling at the Wine Kollective where I will be promoting my vino. Its the blue building on short street, so come and say hi.

A little more conserning for me is, tomorrow night, the launch of the Riebeek Valley Calendar and if the pre-sales are anything to go by it is going to be a busy afair. Wish me luck.

With all the wine tasting it is going to be hard to keep track but I will do my best to fill you in.

Being prepared

No, it is not a Damien Hirst, representing the death of a tree. It is a pile of firewood that my housemate Muriel bought in the middle of summer in preparation for winter, The reason being that the wood is delivered wet and takes a huge effort to start.

I was hoping for rain recently and nature has obliged, my feeling is that we are in for a wet and cold winter in the Western Cape, great for the vineyards, The longer the cold, the better they sleep.

Thumb Stars

When things get blurry

Gearing up for the 2010 harvest

Nature has her own timetable, and although I’ve barely finished this year’s harvest, the vineyards are already in preparation for the next one. The vines are slowly shutting down, giving the buds time to store up energy for the next growing season.

Vineyard work is my favourite part of winemaking, and this is a good time to do a post-harvest inspection of the vineyards – to check the evenness of the vines (make sure they’re not too bushy or too sparse) and look out for evidence of any viruses. I’m also hoping for rain – it’s been very hot recently and a good soaking will be beneficial for the vines.

Half of Dean David 2milesquares is harvested from a very-low-yield Shiraz vineyard, sited halfway up a steep south-facing slope on a mixture of shale and granite, that gets no supplementary irrigation. For the 2009 harvest the fruit ripeness was slightly uneven but because the yield is low only a very slight fruit thinning (removing less ripe fruit to create a more even ripeness) could be done. I was a bit concerned about this but the fruit ripened quite evenly in the end.

About 40% is harvested from a Shiraz vineyard that I have a bit of a soft spot for as I’ve been responsible for its care for the last three harvests. Up to the time I took over the vineyard practices had been very intensive and we decided that no more artificial fertilizing would be applied and the soil would be left to recover. Three years on, it is proving to be a very exciting vineyard, producing truly ripe fruit with relatively low sugar (something of a rarity in the Swartland). The very sandy Vilafonte soil may be the reason; and the vineyard is also fairly sheltered from the wind.

A new addition to the Syrah is from another south-facing vineyard that I’m still getting my head around. Its berries are much smaller than the higher-lying vineyards but the growth is very uneven so I will have to pick selectively.

Roll on August, when the pruning and vineyard management begins.

Shine

I dont know about you, but I was unashamebly moved by Susan Boyle, it made me think about the following

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

The above speech by Nelson Mandela was orignally written by Marianne Williamson who is the author of other similar material."

In memory of a beautiful beast

...with whom I had the pleasure of sharing much joy. His name was Mufasa.

The little one is Max who has grown quite considerably since.

Slowly does it…

The way I make my wine relies quite a bit on Nature’s cooperation, and for this reason the process of fermentation can be a little nerve-wracking. Up to that stage of winemaking, it’s mainly patience that’s required: eight months of waiting – with frequent inspections, of course – for the grapes to ripen. Then there’s the backbreaking frenzy of harvest, followed by fermentation, which began very quickly this year. Punching down is necessary to keep the skins in contact with the fermenting juice to ensure the very best extraction of flavour and colour (red wine gets it colour from the grapes’ skins).

This year I kept the skins on the juice for an additional two and a half weeks. While this is beneficial because it results in richer, more complex flavours, it’s also a risk: bacterial spoilage is a real possibility.

I pressed on Wednesday, a full-day process that left me emotionally and physically exhausted. But I’m delighted to report that my wine is healthy and is showing lots of potential.

So it’s safely in barrels now and for the next month or so will be going through its secondary fermentation. And all that’s required from me, in the meantime, is more patience.

Punching down is done, time to press

My 2009 Syrah is ready to be pressed, tomorrow is the big day, cant wait

Its not about the Super 14... Promise

Found this article quite interesting, more as a lesson and not because I am a blue blooded stormers supporter. It is something to take note of.

The treadmill or the great outdoors?

Some aspects of winemaking can be quite physical, especially if (like I do) you use as little machinery as possible – during the two-month harvest you get such good workouts that at the end of most days you’re left feeling satisfied but tired and stiff..

Now, as we go into the ‘waiting’ period for wine, I’m looking at other ways of getting exercise. And of course now that I’m ‘pure Adonis’, the pressure is on to remain statue-like. I live in the country so there’s plenty of options to choose from in the great outdoors: a mountain to scale, dams to swim in, farm roads to jog down. So when I mention that I’m thinking of joining a gym, people are a little puzzled. I suppose they wonder why, given my options, I would want to go and sweat in a stuffy, smelly room with a whole span of people, some staring at themselves in the mirror, others perving, others just sitting on equipment and then getting off having done nothing at all other than waste time until they hit the canteen.

“I like to do the cycling or treadmill or rowing thing and I like the little computer gadgets that tell you your heart rate and the energy you are using," I tell them. “And I also quite like to sauna."

I also quite fancy the thought of joining a gym because it’s like destination: you go there and do your thing, have a shower, drink some naartjie Game…

Hm. Decisions, decisions.

I’m an Adonis! (Whatever that may be)

I’ve been called lots of things in my time (some, better left unsaid, by annoyed girlfriends), but Adonis is a new one on me. So when my father called me this morning and said, ‘I believe you’re something of an Adonis,’ I thought I’d misheard.

‘No, I haven’t been to Agulhas lately,’ I replied. (My father has a holiday house there, so it wasn’t unthinkable that that’s what he’d said.)

‘No, no. Adonis,’ he said.

‘A doane what?’ I asked.

After he’d shouted the word at me three times and I still hadn’t understood it, I just laughed and said, ‘Oh, ja.’ My father’s blood pressure isn’t stable at the best of times and I don’t want to be the one who tips him over the edge.

My housemate, Muriel, is a writer, so I thought I’d run the mystery word by her.

‘I’m apparently something of an Adonis,’ I said.

Her reaction was a bit alarming. She narrowed her eyes at me and said, ‘If you start getting all big-headed and stuff, you’re in for such a fat slap.’

This is what happens when you’re just a shy and ‘self-effacing’ (according to Muriel) winemaker and then you agree to appear nude in a calendar. There you are, minding your own business and making wine, when along comes You magazine and calls you (and I quote) ‘pure Adonis’. (For more, see page 18 of the 9 April issue.)

Not having been helped at all by anyone around me, I had to use Wiki to find out who Adonis actually is. He’s a vegetation god, which I obviously really like; he is also annually renewed, which ties in perfectly with winemaking, so that’s good too. He’s ‘ever-youthful’, and I suppose often being mistaken for a teenager explains that one; and, hey, ‘his name is often applied in modern times to handsome youths’! I can feel my head swelling already.

Link for teenager reference: http://salma-gundi.blogspot.com/2008/12/i-am-broke-and-apparently-look-old.html

Red wine and purple teeth

My housemate Muriel could never be a secret tippler – one glass of red wine and her teeth, tongue and lips take on a scary dark-purple hue. She swears it’s because years ago, when she was still on a medical aid, she spent too much time at the dentist having her teeth scraped and deep-cleaned, and now they’re so porous that her teeth suck up red wine like a sponge.

There are several theories as to why this happens. If purple teeth are caused (as some believe) by the tannins in the wine, why are some people affected but not others? Why does only one glass of red wine turn some people’s teeth purple immediately, while others require four or even five glasses for this to happen (and after five glasses, I can’t imagine anyone really caring what colour their teeth are)?

Do you have a personal purple-teeth anecdote? Send it to me, and if it’s a good one, I’ll send you six bottles of Dean David Southern Constellation 2003.

At present the wine is only available In South Africa

dean@unwined.co.za

Getting naked for a good cause

Last year it was the ladies turn but this year some of the men ,of the valley I live in, ( myself included ) got naked for an annual calender.